Ultimately though, Belgian beers work best given their high alcohol levels and renowned complexity. Alcohol does a good job cutting through fatty meats and starchy vegetables, and the beers ranging flavors are able to find a companion somewhere in the Thanksgiving smorgasbord. Take OMMEGANG'S ABBEY ALE. This superb Dubbel boasts a sweet, malty backbone, a robust 8.5% ABV, and flavors ranging from toffee to dried fruit to cinnamon. Slightly more approachable for the novice beer drinker might be a fruity and refreshing Farmhouse Ale, like SAISON DUPONT. And Duvel would be perfectly suitable here as well. When it comes to Belgian beer, you can't go wrong!

Dessert again presents a number of options: Stout, Porter, Fruit Beer, Lambic, Barleywine, or Winter Warmer come to mind. Dark beers go over well in my family, so I am probably going to bring the tasty YOUNG'S DOUBLE CHOCOLATE STOUT or STONE's bold IMPERIAL RUSSIAN STOUT. On the other hand, it's hard to beat pairing your pumpkin pie with SOUTHERN TIER's perfectly spiced PUMKING. There are some hard decisions to be made this Thanksgiving, but as long as you choose beer it should be an enjoyable holiday.

Beer: It's what's for breakfast Breakfast beers aren't for everyone. People will think you have a problem. But we aren't talking about a hair-of-the-dog here — we're drinking beer because it goes great with breakfast!

The best of Oktoberfest beers The Oktoberfest style of beer actually predates the first Oktoberfest celebration of 200 years ago. The other name by which this ancient style is known gives us a hint of its true roots: Märzen.

Review: Louis Family Restaurant There are no Greek columns outside or marble steps, but make no mistake: Louis Family Restaurant is an institution in Providence.

Packers, Steelers — wine?! The Super Bowl is an event that was expressly created to test exactly how many plates of guacamole and nachos a person could consume in a nine-hour period. This occurs while observing an equally large number of commercials praising the same.

Review: Yesterday's Funny thing, nostalgia. When it's about an era you haven't personally experienced, the reminders can be all over the place. Yesterday's bills itself as an alehouse, so visual cues try to trigger images of clanking, frothing mugs.

Review: Cactus Grille Longevity for a non-ethnic Mexican restaurant around here sometimes has less to do with quality than with the Americanization of tastes.

Health 'n' hops Thomas Jefferson once asserted that beer, when drank in moderation, "promotes health." Trappist monks in Belgium and the Netherlands referred to it as "liquid bread."

Oyster quaffing Oysters are the ocean's own raw bar. As easy little food it doesn't get a lot better. But what to drink?